The War Within Islam

Reda El Mawy

Reda El Mawy

In the last two
years, three Saudi princes living in Europe have disappeared. All were critical
of the Saudi government - and there is evidence that all were abducted and flown
back to Saudi Arabia… where nothing further has been heard from them....

S. Binodkumar Singh

S. Binodkumar Singh

Rising
insurgency and a fraught political transition are exacerbating an already
pervasive sense of insecurity about Afghanistan's future. Meanwhile, the
initiation of a new social movement in the country may be more vulnerable to
various forms of manipulation from the old and resourceful mujahedeen parties,
as well as the experienced opportunism of the political class...

Maged Mandour

Maged Mandour

Finally, comes
the stranglehold of Nasserism, which still plays a significant role in the
intellectual development of the urban middle class and its views on the role of
the state. The Nasserists view social and class struggle as an alien Marxist
invention and the natural state of society is one of harmony with the military
playing a leading role. The view of the military and state hovering above, and
not a part of society, still holds....

David Andrew Weinberg

David Andrew Weinberg

Resolving the
current Gulf crisis is important, but doing so without ensuring that Qatar
turns over a new leaf on these various fronts could be counterproductive,
consolidating a major counterterrorism problem for years to come....

Bruce Riedel

Bruce Riedel

Yemen is a
useful battlefield to weigh down the Saudis indefinitely. If the Americans can
be dragged into the quagmire more deeply, even better. A war designed to weaken
Iran is actually helping it against its regional rival....

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

The decline in
terrorism-related incidents can be attributed to the launch of a Province-wide
crackdown on terrorist groups following the February 14-suicide attack on Mall
Road, Lahore. The Provincial Intelligence Centre of the Punjab Home Department
had issued a letter directing the Police leadership to beef up security in
different cities of the Province....

Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud

With ISIS
largely vanquished in Iraq – at an extremely high death toll of 40,000 people
in Mosel alone – – warring parties there are moving west. Shia militias,
emboldened by the Iraq victory, have been pushing westward as far as the
Iraq-Syria border, converging with forces loyal to the Syrian government on the
other side.....

Alastair Crooke

Alastair Crooke

Some
contemporary Saudi Ulema would regard such reforms as constituting almost a
provocation against Wahhabist doctrines, or at the very least, another example
of westernization. ISIS, for example, regards any who seek jurisdiction other
than that offered by the Islamic State itself to be guilty of disbelief — since
all such “other” jurisdictions embody innovation or “borrowings” from other
cultures in its view....

Alastair Crooke

Alastair Crooke

The Al Saud —
in this 20th century renaissance — were led by the laconic and politically
astute Abd-al Aziz, who, on uniting the fractious Bedouin tribes, launched the
Saudi “Ikhwan” in the spirit of Abd-al Wahhab’s and Ibn Saud’s earlier fighting
proselytisers. The Ikhwan was a reincarnation of the early, fierce,
semi-independent vanguard movement of committed armed Wahhabist “moralists” who
almost had succeeded in seizing Arabia by the early 1800s. In the same manner
as earlier, the Ikhwan again succeeded in capturing Mecca, Medina and Jeddah
between 1914 and 1926....

Declan Walsh

Declan Walsh

Qatar’s
self-identity as a centre of refuge dates to the 19th century, when it’s
desolate and semi lawless territory offered sanctuary to outlaws, pirates and
people fleeing persecution across the Arabian Peninsula. “It’s always been this
place where waifs and strays and unwanted people ended up,”...

Nadeem F. Paracha

Nadeem F. Paracha

The pamphlets
presented the lives of popular saints in the light of ‘modernity’, explaining
them as wise and sophisticated men who emphasised the importance of worldly and
spiritual knowledge (as opposed to superstition). The pamphlets explained the
clerics as ‘backward’ but ‘genuine Ulema’ as those who encourage modern
learning and the sciences. Most of the texts produced by the Auqaf during this
period were derived from the writings of Islamic Modernists such as Dr Javed
Iqbal...

Karlos Zurutuza

Karlos Zurutuza

It’s possible
that the world has, indeed, forgotten the Baloch people, but has anyone
forgotten Balochistan? Let’s take a look. Obama needs it for his oil pipeline,
TAPI, Iran and India need it for the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India), and so does
Qatar. China’s constructing a gateway to the Persian Gulf at the port of
Gwadar. Meanwhile Australia, Canada and Chile are extracting tons of gold and
copper from Baluchistan’s enormous reserves, the second largest in Asia. The
greedy scramble for Baluchistan’s treasures will probably heat up even more
when the vast stores of petroleum and uranium hidden beneath its deserts are
opened up....

Ali Al-Ghamdi

Ali Al-Ghamdi

Bangladeshis
considered them traitors because of their decision to stand by the Pakistani
army during the period of secession. As a consequence of this, they were
subjected to killing and rape and were driven out of their homes. Bihari
Muslims have been languishing in squalid camps for more than four decades
without having the basic amenities of life....

Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman

Saudi Arabia is
a country that is easier to write about from afar, where you can just tee off
on the place as a source of the most austere, ant pluralistic version of Islam
— the most extreme versions of which have been embraced by the Islamic State,
or ISIS. What messes me up is when I go there and meet people I really like and
I see intriguing countertrends....

The Guardian Editorial

The civil war
in Yemen in which these weapons are used is peculiarly futile and destructive.
Both sides are guilty of atrocity and attacks on civilians. Neither is capable
of victory. But British arms and British servicemen providing technical support
are helping to prolong the war and so to increase civilian suffering. On the
other hand, they are making British companies lots of money....

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

A North-South
breakup of SF fatalities over the last seven years indicates that SF fatalities
in North Balochistan are consistently higher than South Balochistan, while
extra-judicial killings of civilians account for a large proportion of the
killings in South Balochistan....

T J S George

T J S George

The IS has made
its presence felt in the country. It has even attracted young people from
well-to-do Muslim families to join their ranks. The insecurity violent cow
vigilantes have produced among Muslims in some parts of the country may be a
factor in this. Everywhere there is uncertainty in the air. The world is tense.
The darkness deepens....

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Aijaz Zaka Syed

As long as
terror is defeated and our ‘boys’ win, it matters little how one of the
region’s oldest cities has been reduced to dust. Mosul’s fabled Grand al-Nuri
Mosque – built by the great Nur al-Din Mahmoud Zangi, who mentored Salah ad-Din
Ayyubi (Saladin), the legendary Arab-Islamic hero and victor of the Crusades –
has been reduced to rubble. Apparently, it was because of its historic import
that al-Baghdadi of the IS – the pretender to the so-called caliphate – chose
the great mosque to make his dramatic appearance before the faithful in
2014....

Abdel Bari Atwan

The evolving
relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia is set to become a key feature of
regional politics in the forthcoming phase. This goes beyond the creeping
normalization of relations between the two sides and the holding of discreet
contacts, to the formation of an undeclared but far-reaching alliance....

Kamel Daoud

And here, six
years after Ben Ali fled Tunisia, is a third Assad effect: the idea that if
democracy leads not to liberty but to Islamism, one might as well hold on to
the stability of a repressive regime. But is any of this true? Of course not.
It is dictators who, through repression, produce Islamists and jihadists....

Sedar Ergin

Sedar Ergin

“Within this
framework, in the 1980s, within the scope of the ‘Green Belt’ theory, the U.S.
tried to surround the socialist bloc with an Islamic belt from the south; the
Greater Middle East Project that has emerged today is also based on the same
theory but is covering certain African and Asian countries. When this is taken
into consideration, it is evaluated that Gülen would be supported and regarded
as an example of moderate Islam in line with the aims of this project.” ....

I.A. Rehman

I.A. Rehman

The most
important feature of the resolution was a declaration that sovereignty belonged
to Allah. The Ulema were jubilant. The slogan-walas had defeated the Jinnah
lobby. The Jamaat-i-Islami now declared Pakistan an Islamic state. The most
telling observation on the Objectives Resolution came from a Congress member of
the assembly who warned the house that the resolution had cleared the way for
the emergence of an adventurer who could claim to be God’s appointee. And General
Zia behaved exactly like that....

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot

The
Indo-Islamic civilisation has shown great resilience but may follow one of the
most aggressive routes of Pakistani Islam today, not only because of the
Hindutva push, but also because of factors drawing inspiration and finances
from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Sufism is already under attack in Pakistan,
where sectarian and Jihadi repertoires are gaining momentum....

Cynthia Farahat

Cynthia Farahat

In another veiled call for terrorism, the statement also urged citizens to
"treat all Saudi companies and institutions, as occupying forces."
Not only does this destabilize Egypt's security, more dangerously it can
inspire a coup d'état in Egypt. A coup could be launched with the excuse of
defending Egyptian land, which may work given President el-Sisi's plummeting
popularity.....

Mustafa Akyol

Mustafa Akyol

Since the July 15 failed coup, Turkey has been going through one of its
darkest eras in which “justice” has become desperately lacking. The coup
attempt, for sure, was a bloody episode that required a rigorous prosecution
and a state of emergency. But after a few weeks of “national unity,” the
government began to use the state of emergency as a tool to crack down on all
opposition voices in every walk of life, from politics to journalism to
academia. More than 50,000 people found themselves in jail, and another 140,000
people have been fired from their jobs....